Canadian Banks Moving -- Slowly -- Toward Open Source

Info~Tech Research says that Canadian companies are generally more amenable to using open source software than their U.S. counterparts -- 60 percent of Canadian firms, for instance, will consider open source as opposed to 40 percent of companies in the United States. The same is not true, however, in the financial sector. Only 40 percent of Canadian banks support open source use, according to the research firm's latest study.

Info~Tech analyst Michelle Warren told ITBusiness.ca that the problem for most banks is not that open source isn't an acceptable, low-cost alternative to proprietary software, but that it's "not a killer app that will drive performance."

Not so, says IDC Canada's David Senf, who also dismisses the argument that enterprise-level support for open source is inadequate. Instead, Senf says the cost of moving to open source has been the prohibitive factor.

Even though Canadian firms are behind the U.S. and European companies in adoption, the story says the desire to avoid vendor lock-in will continue to drive the trend toward open source in Canadian financial firms.

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